Eisley - Chongo was born in west central Africa, exact location not certain, to a roving band of forest chimps, sometime in the early 20th century, probably around 1913. He lived a merry life in the jungle into the early years of his adolescence, during which he developed a strong hostility toward Black Africans and Leopards and other such threats to his daily existence.

Being an ape with a keen curiosity and very good powers of observation, Chongo noted that the African tribesmen who were hunting him and his bandmates were making much use of handheld weaponry, including primitive rifles. He surmised that a chimp who mastered the use of these same weapons would be in a better position to defend himself, and in a better bargaining position, as it were.

Then came a stroke of destiny. A White hunting and trading party came through Chongo's area. Chongo was fascinated by the unusual appearance of these foreigners and the exotic equipment and clothing they were outfitted with. Furthermore, he noted that they appeared to have authority over the African bearers who were traveling with them.

By a series of carefully planned overtures, Chongo succeeded in befriending one of the Whites, and was duly accepted into their company as a sort of mascot. He quickly learned how to increase his popularity by "aping" human behaviour and language, wearing clothing, and using common tools. By the time the expedition returned to the coast, Chongo was not only well acquainted with the use of firearms and all the other common devices of the time, but was also speaking fluent English, Bantu, and Swahili. He had reached an uneasy truce with the Black Africans, and was soon given a job loading and unloading ships at the local port.

It was clear to Chongo that the main "action" lay not in the sleepy west African ports, but somewhere across that vast ocean that lay to the west, in a fabled land called "America". He got a job on a tramp steamer, a banana boat, and made landfall in New York City in the late 20s.

Chongo never looked back from there. A job as a stevedore got him through the first year on the New York waterfronts where Chongo came face to face with the endemic specism that has always haunted the "Land of the Free". He flirted briefly with organized crime on the streets of New York, but fortunately decided to cast his lot instead with the forces of law and justice.

Moving to Chicago during the violent years of Prohibition, Chongo hung out his sign as a "Primate Eye" and battled crime, vice, and lawlessness, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Elliot Ness and Melvin Pervis. He helped put Capone away and spent years battling racketeers, mobsters, and the notorious North Side Gorillas gang.

And he's still doing that sort of thing to this day. Yessir, you can thank Chongo for the fact that gorillas have not taken over the inner cities in America, and chimps can now run for public office, and "p**pflinging" has finally been recognized as the unacceptable specist term it is.

Such a deal have I got for Tom! How about a copy of US Army's handbook on improvised explosives? Written for the Special Forces and tells you how to make your own. And just for him, and if you act within the next ten minutes, I will throw in photocopies of plans wherewith he can make his own sten gun! What kid wouldn't want to have his or her very own 9mm submachine gun that they made themselves? And what better family project could there be? Act now...operators are standing by.

O Mitey Stilly, you have done a good deed indeed. I looked up bird mites and felt that it would not be friendly to post the link. Here is a nicer picture.

The only thing I can add to the boys' banter is that my son Tom, who makes big plans about how to spend his money, has a new idea of what he can buy. In the past he has wanted to spend his allowance on such things as 3 gallons of raw milk, hundreds of Pokemon cards, a lifetime supply of matches, rare coins—things like that. But yesterday he asked if he could buy a monkey. "I look forward to changing its diapers, Mom," he said. "And I will set up a little hammock in my room for him to sleep in." I didn't dissuade him, just asked where he thought we could pick one up in Pocatello. His answer: "Oh, I bet they have some down at McKees ."

WHICH green awning, Amos? I count at least three, and the poor, puzzled doctor must be mightily confused going to work each day. That's probably why he moved to the building with the blue striped thing hanging outside. That, and to meet a better class of people.

Looks like Orchard St. and Park Avenue. Not far apart, a few stops by subway. Personally, I think the food is better down on Orchard St.

. . . Sauerkraut and Wehrmacht and Scheisskopf and Dachshund and Dumheit. reminds me: last weekend I took my pit bull and catahoula down to get their annual shots. A woman a couple of places back in the line, with two small wiener dogs, was filling out the paperwork. When she got to breed, she yelled out "who knows how to spell dachshund?" You'd think if she owns the dogs, she'd at LEAST be able to spell the breed. I helped her out with that one this time.

Nice street. Chongo's always wanted to have an office on a street like that. His present location looks a bit more like the street Rapaire posted the picture of, but the buildings are only 3 story, and it's not quite that conjested. Chongo's on the 3rd floor...a handy spot for keeping a good eye on the general area, yelling out the window, and beaning someone with an overripe mango or some such projectile on occasion (when there's a good reason to).

No, Rapaire. Obviously you've never dared venture onto Park Avenue. His office is the the one with the green awning. If you clean up a bit you might be able to walk past it without having the doorman call a patrolman.

I have received communication from the same Liebenscheiss, who is well and comfortable in his ritzy practice in posh offices on Park Avenue, Manhattan, NYC, where he gets to hear the trials and tribulations of those who are stressed by the overwhelming responsibilities of guiding hundreds of millions of dollars.

He suggests your little fantasy about fire-hoses may be some kind of projection, or perhaps a thinly-disguised plea for help. But he hastens to remind you that sometimes a fire-hose is just a fire-hose.

Il est passe, mon vieux. He was caught in the street with a hospital gown on backwards, running around and claiming he was a fire engine. When he pulled out his hose and put out a fire on the cop's leg he was hauled off and is now spending time (and electro-convulsive therapy) in the NYCFTTS. Sometimes he is hosed down with a cold-water hose, too.

Speaking of German, we haven't heard from Herr Doktor Liebenscheiss in some time. He can usually get to the heart of any matter and express it succinctly in a few well-chosen words of surpassing insight and brilliance. I wonder why he hasn't been around here lately?

Because Rapaire had for Many Years dealt with things like Incunabula and manuscripts and Still finds capitalization to be, as his predecessors did, something hit-or-Miss. Also, his Germanic Ancestry prompts him to capitalize Nouns, including Sauerstoff and Sauerkraut and Wehrmacht and Scheisskopf and Dachshund and Dumheit.

Yeah, but you said they had "family going back to Dingle." They wouldn't be the first to "reverse emigrate." They probably lived in the old castle, cleaning the garde robes and collecting the night soil for their sustenance.

What I meant, Rapaire, is that some of Shane's ancestors came from Dingle (the one in Ireland). I think it was his great grandfather and a whole slew of other McBrides who migrated across to North America during the potatoe famine. Some of them eventually ended up in Blind River, Ontario, and the rest is history. Or it isn't. Depending on your viewpoint.

Aw, g'wan, dingle berry. Sure humans tend to sag down to the level of apes sometimes, but they have also continued pulling themselves up by the bootstraps to accomplish miracles of engineering, technological design, improved health, and interplanetary travel. The chimps of Chongo's generation are still thinking about what it might be like to ascend to so lofty a plane as a homo sapiens.

Whaaa, whaa, whaaa. Tell your simian bedmates they have a looooong way to go if they are serious about being recognized as a comparable species. For starters they could take lessons from the cetacean crowd. This would be an excellent porogram of species self-improvement. Many of them would self-select out of the gene pool in the effort, by drowning, and the rest might even learn something.

As their duly appointed representative, knuckle-dragger, I charge you to send them all this message.

1. Get a brain.

2. Evolve.

3. Learn speech.

If they will not do these things, they are doomed to continue to occupy the lower hierarchies of the food chain, and remain second-class organisms. They will have to get used to it if their inherent apathy defeats any effort toward species-wide improvement.

LOL!!! Ah-Ha! Ha! Ha! I love it when you talk like that, Amos. Believe me, sir, when I tell you that you are hated by chimpanzees across America. You are as the dirt beneath their knuckles. They hoot in derision at the mention of your name. They hurl offal in your general direction.

Sir, you are a worse scoundrel than you have ever admitted before; your effrontery in so demeaning a treasured, venerable, and esteemed category of creative effort is scurrilous, reprehensible, and disingenous.

Considering the work I did around the house yesterday I was indeed a "tail dragger." But better by far to be dragging your tail due to honest labor than to go to bed tired from throwing muck at honest working people...as some of those Southern Californian Tea Party Neocons I could name seem to do. Never mind, though. Come the Revolution we will no longer allow ourselves to be ground under the iron heel of the Bosses!

For a Manne of Booques you seem to lack an ear for grammar. The expression was "on this, our Mom..", a prepositional clause describing the object of the verb to bestow. And the statement is accurate as it does not say in which post this act of profound benificence occurred.

The second instance of "this" refers back to the substantive act described int he first sentence.

IF you would take the time to look, Amos, you would find that I posted a translation of the immortal poem which was made by Hassad H. Dodgson, the uncle of Charles L. Dodgson.

Even when I correctly attribute works I am assailed from all sides! I think I shall do some harm to myself, such as cutting the hairs off of my face. Perhaps I shall even RIP a plant out of the ground and put it elsewhere, assuming the rain permits such. Why, oh why, dear Mother, am I so besieged?

Besides, you have small Latin and less Greek whereas I am conversant in the Classics, including those of Asia and Northern Europe.

Being unable to read Latin is not dyslexia. It's being somewhere in the general vicinity of th epresent era. Rapaire can't read Latin either but he is easily amused by on-line translation software. Sic semper narcissi.

Thanks. My dyslexia is particularly challenged by some of these translations. So I don't fool with them. :)

Aww, look. The Amazon ad is offering DVDs of Marlene Dietrich in Lili Marlene and Kismet (the one with Ronald Coleman, not the later musical with Howard Keel, Ann Blythe, Vic Damone, etc., in the funniest and most politically INCORRECT film that could be found to view these days.)